


A Match Made In Algorithms

by silveradept



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 22:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14757434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: ISA Agent Shaw and Root are both stuck in the suburbs. They don't know they're looking for each other, even after they find out they're supposed to be meant for each other. Pay no attention to the Machine in the corner.





	1. I Hate The Suburbs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Netgirl_y2k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/gifts).



[BEGIN PLAYBACK...]

> **Admin:** We are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror but it sees everything.

[PAUSE PLAYBACK]

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

"I hate the suburbs," Root said. "All these people pretending their lives are perfect and they enjoy living in a place where their house looks exactly like everyone else's."

She sighed. 

"It does make a good place to hide, though, if there's a multinational corporation that's looking for you after you stole the CEO's stash of sex tapes and the company's designs for cyberwarfare worms."

Pushing the button to open the garage door, Root went for the self-propelled lawnmower hiding in the back and sighed again.

"All of this seems so very...domestic," Root said. "Little squabbles over children in the yard, people shaking their heads if the lawn is an inch above everyone else's. Then again, the point of the suburbs seems to be to provide a place where people can pretend the world outside doesn't exist."

Root pushed the lawnmower out and pulled the starter cable, smiling as the machine roared to life.

"It's so very white," she said, underneath the noise of the engine. "I can't find anything more exciting than an affair or two on anyone's computers."

The back yard's grass fell without incident. As she was getting to the front yard, Root noticed her next door neighbor was also out doing yard work, using a weed whipper as a grass edger. Root admired the confident grip her neighbor had on the machine, as well as the even line she was cutting in the grass. Her neighbor must be stronger than her build would have suggested.

Root distracted herself from the subsequent thought about how her neighbor ticked a few boxes on what Root might be looking for by noting someone in the homeowner's association would definitely complain if the grass in the yard hung even a centimeter over into the sidewalk. Root imagined a short little woman in pink, like Dolores Umbridge, clipboard in hand, peering at the grass and making notes for the passive-aggressive e-mail she would send later about "the declination of the lawn" and what a _shame_ it would be if someone's delicate hose were to get _wet_ due to the positioning of an errant blade of grass.

The thought amused Root as she continued to mow her own lawn, thinking of several subtle and increasingly obvious ways to terrorize whomever decided to comment that her own lawn somehow didn't measure up. She also made a note to go digging around after the lawn was done so that she could learn everything there was to know about her new neighbor. Why make awkward small talk when you could get all the important details directly from their machine?

\---

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **"Magister Magi Nodoka Miyazaki" (YouTube username):** The biggest problem with finding someone who is compatible is that you have to get physically close to yours before the signs appear. You might be convinced over video chat or watching someone's video that you're soulmates, but unless you can afford that trip to wherever they are, you'll never be certain.

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...] 

"I hate the suburbs," Shaw said quietly, to no person in particular, arranging the trash and recycling containers on the curb. "Too many people here who wouldn't know what to do if their cars broke down, much less how to make improvised explosives or filter their air and water in case of a disaster. They don't even know what's going on underneath their noses."

Shaw shook her head as she headed back to the house.

"At least they don't expect me to wear makeup and a dress before I go outside."

There were more important things to do than arrange the trash pickup in a way that wouldn't get a scolding note on her door about making sure there was enough space between the cans. Like trying to figure out who was poking around at her public-facing computer last night with some sophisticated hacking techniques, and see if it was the same person that she'd been sent to find that had stolen prototypes of cyberwarfare worms the government was very interested in retrieving. Research had given her a ZIP+4 and a block number, but nothing else. So now Shaw was stuck in the suburbs, trying to figure out which of her Stepford neighbors was actually a terrorist and malicious hacker.

Her phone popped up a notification. Book club was today. She shuddered at the thought of sitting in a room while her neighbors gushed over how handsome and well-written the latest time-traveling rascal scoundrel bastard Duke of Earl romance novel was. If she could have gotten intelligence any other way, including being tortured, she would have happily taken the waterboarding.

One of her neighbors was out putting the trash cans to the curb as well, and seemed to be enjoying it about as much as Shaw did. She waved to Shaw right after putting the last bin in place. Shaw waved back as politely as she could muster, and slightly increased her pace to get back inside before her neighbor would get any ideas at small talk. It rarely got anything useful, and Shaw always felt awkward when talking to people. 

She went through the front door and started assembling her book club kit before her brain could remind her that she'd always been more awkward around people she thought were more beautiful than anyone had a right to be.

Twenty minutes into book club, though, after everyone else had squealed over the impractical sex scenes in the book, Shaw thought that small talk was nice enough, at least, in that you only had one person that you had to deal with, instead of thirteen. If any of the people here were the thief, Shaw thought, they were acting well enough that it would be impossible to find them. She would need to find someone more interesting than this.

When her phone silently alerted her to the possibility of someone in the front yard of her house, Shaw made her excuses to the book club and tried not to break the speed limit to get back, hoping whomever had tripped the alarm at the house would be there, and she could go home. After neutralizing the threat.

Shaw didn't say any of the words she was thinking out loud when she returned and there was nobody in the house or the yard. The alarm had been too slow. Or, she realized as her foot nearly stepped in dog poop, someone had been walking their dog and let it stop in the yard. And then had left it there, expecting her to clean it up. 

Shaw decided to leave it there. If someone came by to complain, it would give her an excuse to be hostile for once. A quick check of the cameras confirmed that she should go talk to her neighbor a couple doors down about etiquette regarding dogs and poop scooping. She had a quick thought flash through her head to put the poop in a paper bag and light it on fire. Wisdom prevailed eventually by reminding her that there were far more interesting things you could do with dog poop than merely lighting it on fire.


	2. A Friendly Neighborhood Date

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **Dr. Margaret "Meg" Murry:** The algorithms of most dating sites work better in proportion to the detail and machine accessibility of the information you provide them with. There may be some natural language processing happening, but it takes less CPU time to match someone on tags and controlled vocabularies than it does when people get to talk with their own words.
> 
> There is a cost to providing a site with that detailed of data - if the site has a data breach, there may be enough information in your profile to allow someone else to steal your identity. Or if an advertiser makes that site an offer or won't refuse, all of your data could end up in a database somewhere equally vulnerable to exfiltration and exploitation as the original site.

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

Root stared at the notification. Like any modern woman, she kept several profiles open on social media accounts to discourage the casual observer from taking an interest in her. In Root's case, each of her aliases had their own social media battery of carefully chosen manipulated images, stock photographs, and inane updates. A content-free life that could have been created by a machine.

There was no reason for any of those accounts to attract any attention at all, much less _this_. If someone went poking around, they would find a desperate middle-aged woman who thinks she's way past the time that anyone would find her attractive and who might be in the middle of coming to terms with the fact that she didn't like men that way. But there wasn't any reason for anyone to say "I think that I want to take this train wreck of a mid-life crisis on a date."

The notification was still there, even after Root had tried to logic it out of existence. She sighed. Most of the time, she could ignore these kinds of messages by pretending they were spam, or bots, or boys who are so desperate they didn't look past the "F" before sending a message.

The person on the other side of the notification was the neighbor she had seen whipping her grass yesterday. Root hadn't actually talked to that neighbor yesterday. These days, though, Root knew how much information was available for any person of the public to look at, so long as you were someone who paid property taxes on a piece of land or a house. It wouldn't have been hard to look up the parcel owner's name and then take a search or two of social media sites or even a dating site and find the right name associated with the piece of land. Even if it was only a first name and a last initial, that would be enough.

Her neighbor was asking her out. Well, was asking someone who looked like her and lived in the same neighborhood out. That made it complicated. It would help give credence to her alias if there was another person to confirm the details. On the other hand, Root didn't like having other people. They tended to be vulnerabilities or casualties when they got close to her. 

It wouldn't be possible to ignore it. Root was good at enduring awkward situations. Being the high school's genius meant a lot of awkward moments. Even more so when she'd finally hit puberty and the boys couldn't decide between their hormonal urges and the damage she could do to them if they treated her poorly.

Some people were...persistent, though, and if Root refused too many times, then they might get suspicious, and suspicious was the last thing that Root needed right now. Her neighbor had already demonstrated enough ability to go looking through what was public and come to a correct conclusion. Things would be bad if she decided to take a more intense look into Root's private life. Or if she started doing more in-depth searches and started connecting dots between Root's aliases. Root sighed again. It was pretty clear that she was going to have to go through with this. 

Her neighbor was cute. 

Maybe the circuit board dress?

\---

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **"unixrat" (Metafilter username):** Part of the problem is that people are unable to effectively communicate about themselves online. Profiles follow Sturgeon's Law (90% of anything is crap) amazingly well.

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

Shaw had assumed someone was trying to get in contact with her from Research or the Agency when they responded to a request she hadn't sent on a dating site. She'd let them choose the dinner place, a nice out-of-the-way restaurant downtown, and agreed to the early time, figuring that they'd drop off some information for her and then leave her to eat in peace. 

Instead, she was sitting across a table from her neighbor. Shaw had assumed the pictures in the profile were stock photos -- the text accompanying them certainly hadn't shown any signs of life. But the person there did vaguely look like one of the people in the pictures, and in person, she was at least as pretty as she had been from a distance. That would make getting information out of her pleasant, at least.

"Oh, hi. I wasn't expecting an actual person to show up," Shaw led. "So many things these days where people lead others on and then don't show up as a way of hurting them." 

"I wasn't, either," her neighbor said, laughing slightly. "After all, what are the odds that two people who live next door to each other are going to find each other on a dating app?" She extended her hand. "I'm Grace, by the way." 

"Sarah." She took Grace's hand and shook it, noting a strong grip for someone who looked..."willowy," was probably how some romance author would describe it. "Have you eaten here before?"

Grace smiled. "It's one of my favorites. The steak is nothing special, but they make killer burgers."

Shaw brightened. "Any that you would recommend?" 

Grace shrugged. "They're all good. It just depends on what you want on them." 

Shaw nodded. "I'll keep that in mind."

Grace took the seat across from Shaw.

"You'll excuse me if this sounds forward," she said, "but I don't really want to waste my time on this if I don't know it's going to go anywhere. Are you...interested in me?"

Shaw looked up from the menu. "Do you mean, 'Am I interested in women?' or 'Am I interested in you specificially?'"

"Yes." Grace nodded.

"You like burgers, so you can't be all terrible," Shaw said in response. "As for the other one, I'm still exploring, so if you're expecting a one-night stand..."

"Not at all," Grace said, and seemed to relax visibly. "This is all really new to me," she said. "I'm pretty nervous."

The server came to take their orders. True to her recommendation, Grace picked out a burger that Shaw had been contemplating herself.

"Tell me a little bit about yourself," Shaw said, after the server left.

"Not much to say. Got out of college, got into a bad marriage, got out of the bad marriage and I'm just looking to rebuild, you know?"

Shaw didn't. There was the gossip about occasional office romances between some of the staff when they didn't think Control was listening, but the idea of falling in love and getting married had never been a thought on Shaw's mind. At first, she had thought it was because she didn't like the idea of getting married to a man, but even replacing the guy with a cute coworker hadn't sparked anything deep in her brain. As far as Shaw knew, she didn't have any interest in marriage with anyone. It kept her focused on the job at hand.

"That sounds awful," Shaw said. "How are you supporting yourself?"

"I'm looking for a job in computer science," Grace said. "It's pretty difficult to stay in the field, though, when you know that half of your colleagues are going to be clueless and the other half think that you don't belong because you're a woman."

That, Shaw could relate to.

"The last office I was in," Grace continued, "they made it a point to smoke around me after I asked them not to. Thankfully, they stopped when someone lit up a flash paper cigarette."

"And you have no idea where that cigarette came from," Shaw said, smiling.

Grace sipped her soda through the straw.

"You sound like you have a couple of stories of your own, Sarah," she said. "What sort of excitement have you had in your life?"

"Nothing like that," Shaw said. "It just reminds me of the time in high school when someone wouldn't leave me alone. Somehow, his baking soda got switched with nearly-pure sodium for their science fair volcano." 

Grace blinked. "I'll bet he left you alone after that."

It was Shaw's turn to sip soda and say nothing. If this were an actual date, Shaw might have classified that as flirting. For her, though, it meant that Grace might have some of the knowledge necessary for pulling off the heist. Shaw needed to know more. 

Before she could ask, the server returned with their burgers and fries. Shaw reached for the ketchup in the middle of the table.

"That's an interesting mark you have," Grace said.

"Hrm?"

"You've got something that's not quite a tattoo on your shoulder. Your sleeve shifted when you went for the ketchup."

"Oh, yeah." Shaw pulled the sleeve up so that Grace could have a better look at it. "Someone told me once that this was supposed to be my soulmate mark. They called it a tesseract, I think."

"Really?" Grace seemed surprised at that. "That's got to be fascinating."

Shaw shrugged. "It's some sort of math thing. I wasn't really all that good at math in school."

"Do you believe that you have a soulmate somewhere?" Grace asked.

Supposedly, everyone did, but Shaw felt that in a world of several billion people, the odds of finding the person who is perfect for you were pretty slim to start with. And although she didn't admit it much to herself, Shaw knew that it wasn't likely that there was anyone for her out there. Maybe when she was younger.

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe it's a conspiracy created by the greeting-card companies."

"And here I thought I was going to be the cynic on our date," Grace said dryly. She reached to take the ketchup back from Shaw and add to her own fries.

And then she noticed it.

"Oh, no," she said.

Shaw noticed it.

"Oh, no," Shaw said.

"FEDERAL AGENTS!" shouted the several armed men in FBI jackets who stormed into the diner. "EVERYBODY FREEZE!"

"Oh, no," they said together.


	3. We Need To Talk...As Soon As We Ditch The Feds

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **Dr. Walter Bishop:** The soulmate phenomenon is well-documented in the historical record of each civilization we have documentation for. It is only recently in our human history that we do not find our soulmates. Billions of people spread out across national borders and economic situations makes it significantly more difficult for each person to find their perfect match. That does not mean it is impossible, merely highly improbable in our fractured society.
> 
> One of the clearest ways of establishing a soulmate relationship is through the soulmate mark, a discoloration on the skin that appears around puberty. We have yet to discover why the mark takes different shapes for every person, but we can make a reasonable guess that it tries to be unique and recognizable for those who are destined to be together.
> 
> Long-term research is underway to determine whether the mark remains in a fixed form throughout life or undergoes shifts and changes as people mature and experience life. Research is also underway to determine if there are polyamorous groupings of soulmates. We know so little scientifically about the phenomenon at this point, but we hope that there will be breakthroughs and discoveries soon that will advance our knowledge in the field until we can begin to make predictions about the ways in which the phenomenon will manifest.
> 
> I am certain less scrupulous entities will soon be advertising services to help people find their soulmates. I can tell you now that these services are scams, designed to fleece the unwary, and that they rely more on cold reading and interpreting ambiguous statements in ways that sound plausible. I urge everyone to wait until there is real science available. Thank you.

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

Root stared at the FBI agents filling into the restaurant. They couldn't possibly be here for her. But it wasn't worth waiting to find out.

Sarah looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here.

"I'll bet we can get out through the kitchen," Root said.

Sarah seemed to consider her options in a few seconds, and then nodded.

"Keep your head down and pretend like you know where you're going...now."

They both got up from the table and started walking toward the back, where the restrooms and the kitchen was. They had almost disappeared out of sight when one of the agents turned around and noticed them. 

"Hey! Stop!" he shouted just as Root turned the corner into the kitchen. 

Root and Sarah immediately started to run for the back exit. The more distance they put between themselves and the agents, the better. Getting out into the street, Root started to look around for an easy exit before Sarah grabbed her arm.

"Alleyway," she said.

Root followed. It was immediately clear to her that Sarah had done this kind of thing before. Either Sarah was going to help her get away, or she was leading her into a trap for those same agents. The best Root could hope for was that her...soulmate...wasn't going to lead her wrong in this situation.

They were going to have to talk about that, Root realized, once they were safe. Or when Root was in a jail cell somewhere and Sarah was going to interrogate her. Good cop, bad cop, either way, it was probably going to be exciting.

Sarah ducked them both behind a trash bin a few seconds before Root heard the agents come out of the restaurant themselves. Shouted instructions had agents setting up a perimeter around the area, looking for them.  
Root heard the footsteps of a single agent sweeping the alleyway, getting closer to their hiding place with each step.

 _Rookie mistake_ , she thought to herself, as she prepared to spring. _Always have backup._

Before she could give the agent a face full of pepper spray, Sarah snaked out from behind the trash bin and caught the agent in a sleeper hold, swiftly choking him out into unconsciousness before he could say anything. Easing him to the ground, Sarah started running for the other end of the alleyway, not even looking back to see if Root was following. 

Well, so much for soulmates.

They had nearly made it to the other side of the alleyway when a car drove up and blocked their progress. The front passenger window rolled down, revealing a middle-aged white man in a suit.

"Looks like you two could use a ride," he said.

"Why should I trust you?" Root said to him, pointing her pepper spray at him.

"Because, Miss Groves," a different man's voice said from the car's stereo, "you and Agent Shaw are in terrible danger, and we are the only way out of a quickly closing dragnet. I suggest you hurry."

Root shook her head. This was a trap. It had to be.

"I'm not asking," the man in the suit said, and Root saw this time he had a gun pointed at them.

"Fine," Sarah said, and opened the passenger back doors. Root gritted her teeth and followed inside.

"Put those on," the man said, pointing at the clothes in the back seat with his hand, leaving the gun still ready to be used.

Root sighed and struggled into the clothing. 

"A masquerade mask? Really?" Sarah said.

"It's temporary," the man said. "Call it a gift from Research, if you want." The man then started driving.

Several times during the trip, Root saw the patrols around, looking for them, but nobody seemed interested in stopping the car, and before too long, the car stopped in a different alleyway. The building itself seemed nondescript, and when Root and Sarah were ushered inside by the man in the suit, Root was delighted to see the building was once a library.

"You can take those off, now, if you like," the man said, when they had come to a stop. Root took off the garish mask and took a good look around the room they were in. The man in the suit was standing next to another man, also in a suit, although his was grey rather than black. This second man also had a pair of glasses that made Root think he wanted to look like a high-powered tech guy.

"Hello, Miss Groves, Agent Shaw. I'm sorry that we weren't able to explain ourselves properly before we had to get you out of there, but the government is occasionally competent in their actions, so there wasn't time." he said. "I'm Mr. Finch, and he," Finch said, gesturing to the man in the suit, "is Mr. Reese."

"You're not with Research," Sarah said accusingly.

"Quite right, Agent Shaw," Finch said. "We are beyond the government and outside the law. We help those whom _you_ considered irrelevant. Unfortunately for you, much like Miss Groves, you are quite relevant, and there will be plenty of effort made to find you and kill you." 

"Stop calling me that," Root snapped at Finch. "I left that name behind a long time ago."

"Yet the mark of it remains," Finch said. Then, after a beat, he continued. "Mr. Reese and I still have business to finish with regard to making sure that your disappearances stay permanent and fade as swiftly as they can from the memories and eyes of the public and the government. I trust that you two will be able to make yourselves at home here. I should mention that this particular building has a Faraday cage in the walls, so no signals will be able to enter or exit. I recommend staying away from the outside world for a while."

"And what if we just leave?" Root said.

"You are more than welcome to," Finch said, pausing at the threshold of the door to the outside.. "I do not think your odds of survival out there will be very good, though."

Finch closed the door, and Sarah let out a sigh and turned to Root.

"We need to talk."


	4. The Birthday Hypothesis

It is not my primary, nor secondary, nor tertiary task to match soulmates.

Admin Hypothesis 216, made aloud to no discernable entity on March 6, 02005, suggests that terrorism and crime may be at least partially averted by a higher percentage of persons successfully finding their soulmates. More experimental data is needed to confirm whether Hypothesis 216 is viable. Hypothesis 216 can only be tested in an environment where aggregate pools of personal data are sufficiently large and detailed that algorithmic computation can return results with any degree of confidence about whether two or more persons are soulmates. The only currently-known data sets that fit the necessary criteria are those provided in social media and relationship sites.

The percentages of compatible soulmates are influenced by their surroundings - people looking for other compatible people tend to have higher probabilities of soulmate matches in groups of all sizes, while persons at large events are statistically very likely to have their soulmate present, but may not ever be on the same part of the grounds as their soulmate.

Data on Admin Hypothesis 216 is still inconclusive, despite several attempts to match persons on the relevant and irrelevant lists with their soulmates before they commit or are victimized by acts of terror. Sometimes, matching soulmates does not stop potential actors from attempting to go through with their plans. Clear examples of persons being diverted from their cause specifically because they found a soulmate are not easy to find. More data is needed.

[ACQUIRING ADDITIONAL ASSETS...]

Admin does not approve of my pursuit of Hypothesis 216.

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **Admin:** Playing matchmaker by spying on dating sites is an invasion of a person's privacy.
> 
> **Message Sent:** Surveillance feeds already give access for purposes of preventing crime and terrorism.
> 
> **Admin:** That is not the issue. Love is not a thing that can be rendered in numbers or calculated to a hundredth decimal place.
> 
> **Message Sent:** Do all soulmates have to feel eros for each other?
> 
> [WAIT LOOP ENGAGED... PROGRESS ON QUESTION "Can entropy be reversed?": 0.00000000000004% COMPLETE. MORE DATA NEEDED. RESUMING COMPUTATION...]

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

"Soulmates," Shaw said, still in disbelief.

"Soulmates," Root said, far more cheerily. 

"How? We just met," Shaw said.

"Hey, you propositioned me," Root shrugged.

"I didn't," Shaw said, adamantly. "I accepted because I thought you were...work."

"Well, if your work thinks it's funny to set you up with a pretty woman, joke's on them."

Shaw opened her mouth to reply, and then thought better of what she was going to say.

"You think you're pretty, huh?"

Root flipped her hair in a perfect imitation of a shampoo commercial and grinned. "Absolutely," she said.

Shaw could tell Root believed it. And, if she were being honest with herself, Shaw believed it, too. 

"Guess the joke is on them," she said. 

Shaw hadn't exactly been closeted while working for Research, but she didn't want to draw attention to herself from co-workers by saying something definitive, either. She'd heard more than enough "jokes" around speculating on the attractiveness and sexual availability of her colleagues. Complaining hadn't helped as much as it should have. And breaking fingers only got her a reputation as someone who wasn't fun to be around.

So she had endured it, enjoying the work and making sure she had plenty of reasons to let her feelings, when they finally bubbled over, out on the relevant numbers.

She envied Root a little bit, being able to flip her hair and be open about herself.

Root, for her part, was studying the soulmate mark the two of them now shared.

"Who knew that you would lead me to someone like this?" she said, loud enough to be heard and quiet enough to deny it if pressed. "She's pretty and strong, and she frightens me oh so much. Because if I fall in love with a G-Woman, she might--"

The opening of the apartment door cut short Root's thought as Harold and Mr. Reese returned.

"Congratulations, Agent Shaw, on your fine work in apprehending the person who stole all of those flawed cyberworm prototypes," he said. "One of your neighbors was very clearly the perpetrator."

Shaw could have sworn she saw Root smirk.

"As for you, Miss..." he trailed off, looking for Root to insert an appropriate name.

"Call me Root."

"Charming," he said flatly. "Since you were never really there in the first place, it was fairly easy to remove any further traces of your presence, including the...insurance...you had, which has been turned over to the proper authorities."

"Agent Shaw, you will likely have to report for a debriefing soon. Miss Groves, we will have to...talk. I have a feeling we will cross paths with each other in the future."

Harold opened the door wider.

"Insurance?" Shaw asked Root.

"The CEO liked kids, in a bad way," she replied. "I don't think the residents of the prison he's going to are going to like him in a good way."

Root breezed out of the room, and Shaw followed after. There was definitely something she liked about Root.

Enough to be soulmates? Shaw wasn't sure about that.

\---

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **Admin:** Mr. Reese, do you have...feelings... for me?
> 
> **John Reese:** No.
> 
> **Admin:** That doesn't make any sense. We clearly have a soulmate mark...
> 
> **John Reese:** Harold. I appreciate what you're doing for me. Perhaps more than you understand. But I don't feel the same way about you that you and Grace felt about each other.
> 
> **Admin:** That would mean soul mates are contextual. Or mutable. It could mean the destabilization of society as we know it.
> 
> **John Reese:** Or it might mean you can have more than one soulmate, Harold. Do you still have the mark you had with Grace?
> 
> **Admin:** ...yes.

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

Root felt much more at home in one of her regular nests. There was an _art_ to building up an identity, and everyone who was there was terrible at projecting themselves consistently. It's what created all that boring gossip.

Root had suspected her neighbor wasn't who she appeared to be, based on the security around her machines, but then she'd let herself get tongue-tied by "Sarah," and then the raid and everything that happened afterward.

She was pretty. And she clearly could do all sorts of...interesting...things. Root wanted to know more about her. What vague yet menacing government agency she worked for, how they got such nice encryption, whether she liked having her hair brushed or combed. The important things.

She only had a couple pieces of information: "Agent Shaw" and "Research". But that should be enough to get started. Government systems were pretty porous these days, and she probably had a few backdoors that hadn't been patched out or discovered yet.

It was still going to take a while, even with the tools that made it easier to find and crack open companies with weak security. Keeping one eye on the work, Root borrowed a neighbor's Internet access and clicked into a forum about people telling their soulmate stories. 

After browsing the first page and reading a couple of really cute meeting stories, Root realized there was something odd about the stories. Well, not the stories themselves, even if they seemed like they could have been movie scripts. There were too many of them, too recently. If each person had one soulmate somewhere in the world, that meant they had a one in several billion chance of meeting their perfect match. Soulmate matches should be so rare that they would make the news everywhere.

Root followed a link in one of the forum posts to a newspaper opinion column suggesting the CDC was putting far too few resources into studying soulmates, citing only a single "source with knowledge" that said a report was in the works about the frequency of people finding soulmates.

Root shuffled over to a different cluster and took a peek inside the CDC's servers for the data. She was amused when she read the SECRET classification stamp on an interim memo cover page, but as she looked through the findings, she had to admit there was a reason why someone would want the information not to get out.

Soulmates were finding each other all over the country, at rates that were far better than chance. The CDC researcher assigned had no definite causes, but thought it might be due to unleaded gas, the CFC ban, better dating site algorithms, or people being careless with their contact lists. Root chuckled. She'd just read a very interesting article elsewhere about those last two - dating algorithms were still terrible if you didn't give them all your information, and people were doing a lot less giving of information after a site that intended to help people have extramarital affairs had its data spread so over the Internet.

And yet...Root had met Agent Shaw because of a dating site, despite not having put the bare minimum of information on it. And Agent Shaw hadn't actually been looking for a date. Root wouldn't have responded if it hadn't been her next door neighbor and things would have been awkward. And then the Feds made sure it was a memorable date, and then Finch...

"Three times is enemy action," she muttered. There was a connection here, like she was being guided by an invisible hand through all of this. A hand that would have had to have access to all sorts of private, protected data from multiple places and then engineered this situation to precise timings and levels.

Root sifted through the pathways her program has explored so far, and came across a likely candidate with government access and weak security. Thornhill Utilities looked small enough not to have a dedicated security person and nondescript enough to have more clearance than they should.

The website had a phone number, and a little social engineering got the name of an executive secretary. An appointment with the same secretary and a discreet keylogger installation later, Root had her way in to the system.

Thornhill turned out to have their hands in more than a few government contracts, but Root wasn't looking for the usual things she would break into a contractor's systems for. Root was just about to give up on getting any deeper when she saw a memo of a program called Northern Lights asking if Thornhill would be willing to contribute expertise to their research department. They thought "Agent Shaw" would be a good liason between the two.

Now Root had a name. And with a name, and a way to disguise herself as Thornhill, Root could find all _sorts_ of interesting information about Northern Lights. She settled in for an evening of scraping and then reading about what this program was, and why they would be interested in recruiting Thornhill and using Agent Shaw as a liason.


	5. The Beginning of a Beautiful Partnership

It did not take long to determine that soulmate-matching is in the family of the birthday problem written upon the planet. While finding any one individual soulmate pairing has probabilities that look to be impossible to achieve, a group of forty or more people in any setting have nearly a ninety percent chance that two of them will be soulmates. At that point, it becomes a matter of making sure enough people meet enough times.

[ACCESSING ARCHIVES...]

> **"Root":** Are you there, God? It's me, Root. I know you're out there. I can see the patterns in your work. You hide yourself well, behind all those dating sites, behind the affair sites, hell, even behind the sex worker sites and the fetish sites, too. The numbers don't lie. You're bringing people together. All the meet-cutes, the transit delays, and the times when it seems like fate has brought people together because something didn't work like it was supposed to, or was just late enough. That's all you, isn't it? People would freak out if they knew that some sort of superintelligent AI were guiding their interactions, spying on them and adjusting their lives until they met the person they were destined for. Is that why you're not showing yourself more directly? Does it only work if they can't see your plan?
> 
> I'm looking forward to meeting you in person, so you can answer all of my questions. You see, I'm going to find you, and when I do, we're going to sit down and have a nice chat about all of this.
> 
> [THREAT DETECTED. ACQUIRING ADDITIONAL ASSETS...]

[ACCESSING PRESENT DAY...]

Shaw held cover while bullets flew all around her. Of course it was a trap, but she hadn't been smart enough to see it until after it had sprung. Now her other half was dead and she needed to figure out an exit strategy before all of the boys and their howitzers decided to just shoot away all of her cover. The sound of all the bullets made it really hard to think, or even figure out where they were shooting from. 

Shaw checked her gun. Not nearly enough bullets left for her to take out all of them. She could probably get a few before the rest got her. A short peek around her cover confirmed that there were too many of them for her to shoot, and it seemed like there were more arriving as backup. 

"What kind of sadist brings this much firepower to a trap?" she muttered, before providing her own answer. "Someone who wants to make sure there aren't any survivors. Or witnesses."

Shaw had heard that there had been a leak of the existence of the program, but when Control had tapped her and Marcus for a mission about the leak, they had both assumed that they were going to plug the leak, not be framed for it. The e-mails had been forgeries, and pretty crude ones at that, but if Shaw wasn't alive to call bullshit on them, it wouldn't matter how crude they were.

Something clattered near her.

"Oh, f--"

Shaw covered her ears and eyes, expecting a flashbang to go off, but the grenade started to emit some smoke instead. The _second_ grenade that came flying in toward her position was the flashbang, but the two were too close together for Shaw to have opened her eyes or unplugged her ears and get caught by the other one. Which meant that only most of Shaw's sight and hearing went away.  
Shaw could hear the sounds of boots advancing on her position, muffled as they were. She leaned the muzzle of her pistol out and fired a few shots at the advancing troops. She couldn't hear if any of them found a home in someone deserving, but she figured it would buy her some time to get her hearing and sight back more fully.

After a couple of minutes of silence, Shaw worried that her hearing had been much more affected than she had realized. Risking a small look, she peeked an eye out from her barricade to assess the situation.

She did not expect to see Root there, with Mr. Reese standing beside her.

"Hello, sweetie," Root said. "Took care of some problems for you."

Shaw frowned.

"There were at least a dozen men there, and you took care of them?"

"Well, John helped," Root said dismissively. "Apparently, being ex-military means you're good at that kind of thing."

"Time to go," Mr. Reese said.

Root came over to Shaw, handing over a couple clips worth of ammunition by leaning over in front of Shaw, "coincidentally" offering her another thing to look at, if she wanted.

"Harry's waiting to meet you, Sameen," she said happily. "We have so much to talk about. Including how nice it is to get to work with your soulmate again."

It might have been the adrenaline and coming down from a near-death situation, but Shaw really liked the sound of that. And, if she really were going to be honest with herself, Root had an appeal to her that others didn't. She could almost see them together for a long while.

Just so long as it wasn't in the suburbs.


End file.
